


Closed Doors

by booksandboxsets



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: F/M, Femslash, Mostly Mandy, One Shot, Only Mandy pretty much lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 16:50:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2629130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/booksandboxsets/pseuds/booksandboxsets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was trapped. Trapped behind closed doors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Closed Doors

**Author's Note:**

> apparently i've gained the confidence to write more mandy after doing so for shameless femslash week.  
> triggers: implied rape/suicide

She was trapped. Trapped behind closed doors.

They were never ajar. Always closed.

Even if they were opened, they'd inevitably fall shut again.

She thought it was kind of like the ‘glass half-full or glass half-empty’ analogy – “do you believe doors are made to be open or made to be closed?”

Closed, always closed. 

And not for privacy. They closed for confinement, closed for isolation – blocking you off from whatever lay beyond them. Or trapping you inside with whatever darkness lay within.

Her life was a series of closed doors.

*

She used to believe they were protection, hiding behind one when arguments unfolded between her parents. Her brother would put her behind them too, trying to shield her, not realising that no matter how hard he tried, she couldn’t be shielded.

Closed doors were not effective shields.

She still tried to use them as such though, even now, trying to hide behind her own when her dad returned home drunk. It never worked, a closed door didn't stop him like it did her - he could open it with ease. He never forgot to shut it behind him though; a closed door, hiding from the world the scene which unfolded behind it. A scene which she had put a closed door around in her mind; a closed door, hiding from herself a scene which she never wanted to relive.

She had a lot of doors like that.

*

Even the doors that were open for everyone else would be closed for her. Doors holding new opportunities, doors holding love, doors holding a chance at happiness. Those were the doors which she could never open, despite how many attempts she made.

*

Of course, she should not open doors. She shouldn't even try.

She had learnt that the hard way. Her mother had closed a door behind her once; it was a door which should have remained so. And it had, for hours and hours – all up until a young girl decided to open it again. She shouldn’t have, there was nothing but pain behind closed doors, and this door had held the most pain. If she had kept it closed, maybe she could have gone on pretending that her mother was living behind it, that she had discovered a new world inside the door, like Narnia. Her mother would be dancing happily in the snow now, smiling and beautiful.

But the young girl had opened it, and her mother had been the opposite of living.

It was nothing like ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’. You couldn’t get that far when you were already living with a lion.

*

She couldn’t escape them, not even in her dreams. In her nightmares she would run down a hallway. The hallway had a door at the end, which lead to another hallway with another door. But the doors, they would shut before she reached them. She’d open one, and the one up ahead, it would still be swung open, not yet closed. She would run. Run and run and run.

She never got there on time.

They always closed and she could never see what was on the other side, what or who had opened it before her. She knew she was chasing something better, trying to follow someone who could open the doors for her. She also knew that it was futile - by the time she got there and opened the door herself, whatever or whoever was in front of her had gone through the next one. She'd watch it shut, feel herself being left behind, forgotten.

*

Sometimes the doors were slammed shut, the noise they made slamming into her, if her life were a sound, it would be that of a slamming door; these were the doors of anger, rage, violence. 

Sometimes the doors were shut with no sound at all, brought ever so slowly back into place, not wanting anyone to hear, not wanting anyone to know that it had been briefly opened, not wanting the door to announce her return; these were the doors of fear, apprehension, precaution. 

Sometimes the doors were locked, locked without a key; these were the doors of escape, freedom, the future.

*

 _“You never know what happens behind closed doors.”_ That’s what they always say, isn’t it? What they say when something horrific happens inside a home, be it a strangers, a neighbours, their own.

People do know though, they always do. They just don’t want to open them, the doors, rather they stay shut. Out of sight, out of mind. They’d think:  _‘we’re on the right side of the door, why should we bother helping those behind it?’_

She doesn't blame them; it takes a lot to break open a door, especially when her closed doors are made of metal. Even the widows are barred. Her home is a prison, and people don’t break into prisons, they only break out of them... very, very rarely.

These doors were welded closed, and would remain so forever.

*

Or so she had thought.

All up until someone came along and dared to knock, dared to turn the doorknob. Someone who would start to put doorstops under her doors, leaving them open.

Someone with ginger hair who stood at the threshold, reached out his hand and said,  _“c’mon Mandy, come with me”,_ and he'd lead her out, out through an open door she had given up trying to budge.

A door of friendship.

She’d listen, listen to his hopes and dreams, his optimism and determination to get out. He refused closed doors out of hand.

*

Soon enough, so did she.   


End file.
